Happy New Year! This is my annual open letter to all my friends, to catch you up on what I've been doing over the past year. I hope to make this a quarterly letter from now on, and not let so much time go by!

The big news of the year is that I am finally back at MIT as a grad student (what a long strange trip it's been!) and working on my doctoral thesis. I spent the first half of the year, through early June, just preparing my application for reinstatement to MIT and getting the groundwork laid, and they made the decision in late June. It was a lot of work getting back into MIT, and now I have to do a whole lot more work to get out, but it feels like the right thing to do.

So I'm a doctoral candidate in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, working in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (the lab that basically invented radar back in World War II, as well as lots of other stuff), in the Speech Communications Group under Professor Ken Stevens, this is the same professor I worked for back in the 80s. I'm on a team that's developing a speech recognition system, radically different from mainstream systems in the field. Our system will process the speech sounds as much like the way the human brain as possible. This general approach is called "knowledge based" recognition (because it uses our knowledge of speech and linguistics explicitly) as opposed to "statistically based" systems (which are general pattern recognizers, which you train by throwing a huge amount of raw data at them). All the systems available on the commercial market are statistically based, and they work well only when the talker sounds just like their training data. Our system should deal with casual, spontaneous speech from multiple talkers in noisy or variable environments, which current systems do not.

Anyway, my thesis is basically a syllable detector. One of the first steps in understanding the speech is to find out where the syllables are. This seems so basic that I'm surprised no one else has done it before, but they haven't really, so that's my opportunity! I have a basic syllable detector already built and running, and I'm working on the experiments that will test it and find out just how well it performs. Then I will probably have to fix it up (to deal with whatever problems arise) and make it work better, and show that it works well on conversational speech (which is the whole point) before I have a good thesis. Right now I plan to do experiments and fixes for another half year or so, thesis defense in the fall, then write it up and be ready to graduate in June 2000 (which will also be my 40th birthday). It'll be a lot of work, but I'm psyched for it. Wish me luck!

Outside of school work, I'm still singing in Soundstage 7, the a cappella group I helped found. We do mostly jazz standards and contemporary pop covers. I sing bass, and I've also learned to do vocal percussion for the songs that need it. It's a lot of fun! We rehearse twice a week, and give a concert or gig once every couple of weeks to a month (usually). We have a tape of five songs for sale, and we're working towards a full album, which should be ready in another year I guess, as time and money allow. Anyone who wants to hire us for a gig or party, let me know!

I am still practicing my martial arts daily, every morning. It's a great start to the day, and I feel as strong and healthy as I ever have in my life. I also try to do an evening workout, either rowing on my ergometer, or calisthenics, but I don't get to it every evening. I'm trying to build up my strength to start tae kwon do or kung fu classes, which are more aggressive and intense than the arts I've been doing. Remember that I spend every work day sitting motionless in front of a computer! I did get rather soft in the belly for a while, and I'm trying to build back up.

I still love dancing, either at freestyle dances or at the African drumming circles which I've been going to for years. I don't get a chance to do much drumming these days, but I intend to work it back into my schedule. I'm also still brewing, less beer these days and more mead (honey wine) which is really yummy.

I am still Pagan, although I haven't been going to as many ceremonies and gatherings as I used to. Mostly I don't have time, but I am still religious (as I've always been) and I still pray and do my private rituals regularly.

My home is doing well (for those who don't know, it's a condominium, one quadrant of a Victorian house in Cambridgeport). After building the roof deck and roof window a couple years ago, I haven't done much more in the way of renovation. Mostly it's the floors that need to be refinished and/or replaced, but all that is going to have to wait until my thesis is taken care of. I have a little garden in the back yard, and I grow vegetables in the summer time (green peppers, cherry tomatoes, grapes, and strawberries). I love having a garden, I never want to live without one again!

My little cat, Chani, continues to give me pleasure and companionship, as well as the occasional mess or pouncing attack. She has always been a huntress, and in the summer time, she doesn't eat much cat food from her dish. She brings home mice and birds sometimes, but usually she just stays out in the wilds of Cambridge, being feral. So she gets bored in the wintertime, when there's not much to do but pester me. I have cat toys and string things for her to play with, but she always wants more of my time than I can afford to give her. Poor little thing, she only wants to hunt! Daddy's Little Predator.

I took the month of July off and did some traveling around the Northeast. Debbie Hwang, a friend from my first days at MIT, spent that month working on a project at MIT, so she stayed in my place and took care of everything, including the cat and the garden. It worked out very well. Myself, I got in my VW Vanagon with pop-top camper (which I've named the runabout _Ganges_ from Star Trek Deep Space Nine) and hit the road!

First to Portland Maine to visit friends of the family (they have a house right on a private beach in Saco, it doesn't get much better than that!) and to sample the local microbrews (mostly nice but very hoppy, which seems to be a regional taste). From there I traveled to the northern tier of Vermont, where my sister and her husband own some land, and camped with them for the weekend. I did some hiking in the mountains overlooking Lake Willoughby, which is beautiful! Then I traveled to Farmington Maine and met a friend who's finishing up classes there, got to see the university campus and all.

From there I headed to Acadia National Park, where I've never been before, though I've been wanting to for years. It is as breathtakingly beautiful as its reputation. First day there, I bicycled all around on the carriage roads, from Blackwoods Campground all the way north to Paradise Hill and back again. Second day, I hiked from Blackwoods up to the summit of Cadillac Mountain. (There's an auto road to Cadillac summit, which I might try some other time; I felt that my first ascent had to be on my own feet.) Later, feeling the need for some clothing-free swimming, I went to Bare Ass Depot, and then to Lake Wood, and enjoyed the sun and the water. I also wandered around Bar Harbor, sampling local microbrews and seafood. I only stayed the two days, as the campground was very crowded with Midwestern families in Winnebagos. (Most of them seem to be very pale and flabby. When the hiking trails started getting crowded with them in early afternoon, I felt like it was The Invasion of the Dough People.) I intend to return to Acadia in June or September, when schools are in session, thus avoiding the hordes of yard apes.

From there I returned to Saco and spent another day with the Browns, which is always nice. Then I drove down to Gloucester and stayed a day with a friend who lives on Folly Cove, another beautiful spot. Finally I returned to Boston, checked in with Debbie (everything fine), enjoyed my own bed and shower for a few days, then packed up again and headed out to Starwood.

Starwood is a Pagan gathering in Sherman, New York, which is about as far west in New York state as you can get without being in Pennsylvania. It's about an eleven hour drive from Boston. I pulled over at Schenectady and slept for a few hours, but other than that I drove straight through. I'll have to write a separate letter just about Starwood, it's my favorite gathering, but there's way too much to describe here. Suffice it to say I had a good time as always, with friends new and old at Earth Drum Council, Kung Fu Camp.

After a week of Starwood, I headed back home, but my van broke down in the middle of nowheresville. Apparently it threw a rod, because pieces of metal were falling out of a hole in the crankcase! I hitched a ride to a phone, called AAA, and got a tow to Olean (the only VW mechanic within several hundred miles). This was Sunday afternoon, and the mechanic didn't open until Tuesday, so I spent two days "camping" in a parking space in front of the shop. This was not a fun time; these were the hottest and stickest days of the whole summer, and I felt very helpless without a working vehicle. Neighborhood kids kept coming around to check me out, which I tried to discourage, because the local police were taking notice, and probably thinking I was a child stalker or something. I did get a shower at the local YMCA, sent email from the local library, and read some papers for my thesis. In the evening I took long walks along the banks of the Allegheny River, which was pretty nice.

Tuesday (28 July) the mechanic opened, and he confirmed that the engine was dead and it would take weeks to get a new one. I ended up renting a Ryder truck with tow dolly and towing the van back to Boston (12 hours driving through the night). Then, getting a new engine and having it installed was a long and frustrating experience with delays, dishonest mechanics, cost overruns, and snafus. I didn't get my van back and driveable until mid October. The whole experience was miserable as well as expensive. I have always kept this van in very good repair, at considerable effort and expense, and it still just blew up without warning. My confidence in the vehicle is shaken. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to sell it or keep it, we will see.

Whoo, I guess I needed to get that off my chest! Anyway I'm doing fine now. Let's see, what else? I've also been hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, such as Chocorua, and two trips to Cardigan, staying overnight in the High Cabin just below the south peak. Beautiful. When the weather is poor, there are lots of shows to see here in town. Riverdance was probably my favorite, I also saw the Trinity Irish Dance Company, Blue Man Group, and lots of local plays and music.

I went to a farm in central Massachusetts, to help some friends fell some timber and clear a field, and learned how to use a chainsaw in the process. I took a motorcycle safety course again, and renewed my motorcycle license (thinking I might get rid of the van, which is still possible, but I'm not sure). I did some ocean sailing in a Hobie Cat, what fun!

All in all, as you can see I'm still trying to do way too many diffferent things. Right now I'm trying to spend as much time on the thesis as possible. My goal is to get my degree in my hand before summer solstice of 2000, which is my fortieth birthday. Wish me luck!

Blessings to all, and let's stay in touch!

Wil Howitt
25 Fairmont Ave #3
Cambridge MA 02139-4422
(617)868-6270
howitt@otolith.com
http://www.otolith.com/howitt/